


A Saint of the Lord

by lirin



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: Chocolate Box Treat, Gen, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 12:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13658952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: Few of the stained glass windows here portrayed a woman; but there was one near the back of the church, a saint richly clad in purple.





	A Saint of the Lord

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bigsunglasses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigsunglasses/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta.

The Catholic church that Kivrin had attended in the months before her assignment was small but beautiful. The steeple towered over her as she stood across the street, daring herself to go in. It seemed a lifetime since she had been here, yet it looked almost exactly as she remembered it. The festive greenery of Advent was now absent, but the tiled path and imposing doors were just as they had been two months ago. Just as they had been in the last decade, or perhaps even the last century, she suspected. And all around the building, the familiar stained glass windows of saints and apostles stood watch. Dull and hard to fully make out from her vantage point here in the sunshine, but then the primary function of stained glass was never for those outside the church.

The side door would be open; it was always unlocked during the day, welcoming anyone who wished to pray. Father O'Connor would probably be around somewhere, though he'd finished mass over an hour ago and would not hear confession until late in the afternoon.

All these memories—these certainties of what she would find if she went inside—came flooding back as if she'd only been here yesterday. And it was that, perhaps, more than anything, that drove her finally to step into the road and cross the street.

 

It was no warmer inside than it had been in the street; the heater must have broken again. But the sun was streaming through the windows, and its multi-colored light made Kivrin feel more warm than any simple increase in temperature ever could. Refracting through the stained glass windows, red and green and purple and blue splashed across the floors and the pews, and on Kivrin standing in the midst.

She had seen all of these stained glass portraits dozens of times; she had attended services here for months as part of her prep. Mary and Joseph and Jesus were in the apse by the altar; she knew that without looking. Along both sides of the nave—the sources of the light that even now colored her dress and her hair—the apostles, and some early church fathers. Jerome and Clement, Kivrin thought, but she didn't bother to check. She walked toward the back of the church. There in the corner next to a prayer niche was one of the few windows here portraying a woman.

Kivrin had never paid much attention to that particular portrait. She’d sat next to it once. It had been a Sunday in September; she'd stayed up much too late the night before studying Middle English verb tenses, and followed that up by oversleeping and rushing to church too late for her usual seat. She'd dozed through half of the service, but in the back of her head she’d somehow preserved a fuzzy memory of an elegant woman in purple; and now she wanted to know if the woman was the person she thought it was.

The woman was indeed clad in purple, as befitted a princess. She held a palm—the symbol in art of a martyr—and stood in front of a broken wheel. Her unbound hair streamed about her face, a second halo within her actual halo. The glass workers had done fine work here, as had the painters who had detailed her face. The woman looked thoughtful as she gazed at the viewer, as if she were almost happy despite her mortal fate. Kivrin thought she could understand how she felt. Saint Catherine had completed the tasks God had asked of her. She had debated the pagan philosophers and stayed true to God under torture. She could go to her death with a clean conscience.

Had Catherine known what God wanted of her before the philosophers and torturers came? Had she known what God would work in her life before she stepped forward to confront them? Before the first boil erupted on an unsuspecting innocent in 1348; before Roche said his first mass in an out-of-the-way village; before Kivrin stepped through the net—was there any way to know what God was about to ask of them, or were they doomed from the beginning?

Kivrin stepped closer. Catherine's eyes seemed to follow her. Her purple gown was still perfectly clean and whole, with no indication of the trials she had undergone. About her head, the halo shone bright. "She's so beautiful, so serene," Kivrin whispered. "Is that what you thought you saw when you saw me?"

There was no answer. The only person who could have answered that question had died seven hundred years ago.

Once she had started speaking, the words came easier than she expected. "I miss you," she said. "I wish we'd had the chance to speak more, that I'd trusted you sooner. But perhaps it was better that way, that I never got the chance to accidentally disillusion you and show I'm only human. Maybe you needed to believe I was her to have the strength to make it through. I wish—I wish I could have had that strength."

She glimpsed movement in the corner of her eye. If she didn't turn, she could pretend it was Father Roche, returned to her after a short absence. It was only a few weeks since they'd been together, after all. But it would not be fair to either of them to delude herself so. She turned around, and the glimpse of robes coalesced into the far more modern habit of Father O'Connor.

"I didn't mean to interrupt your prayers," he said.

"It's all right, I was just done," Kivrin said. She didn't tell him that they weren't exactly prayers. Or were they? What was the difference, really?

"I heard you walking around and thought I'd see who was here," he said. "I'm glad to see you made it safely home. We've missed you at mass; I hope you'll continue attending even if you no longer need it for your prep. How was your trip?"

"I'm not allowed to talk about it very much," Kivrin said. "The University has rather stringent rules and quite a few solicitors. I can say that I met some wonderful people, and others who weren't so wonderful. And I learned a lot."

Father O'Connor's eyes were piercing, and Kivrin wondered if he heard what she wasn't saying in addition to what she was. "Well," he said, "I don't know what you're likely to need after your experience. But if you need anything, I'm here. Just let me know."

Kivrin thought for a second. "Actually, there is one thing," she said. "If I wanted to have a memorial mass said, is there any rule about how recently the person lived?"

"Is it all right if they lived in the 1300s, you mean?"

Kivrin nodded.

"I don't see why not. The book of intentions is in my office, if you want to make your request now."

"Yes, I do." She hadn't even been considering it until a few moments ago, but she knew it was the right thing to do.

"Follow me, then. Who do you want the mass to be said for?"

"His name was Father Roche. I don't know if he had any other name." Kivrin followed Father O'Connor across the nave and along the hall to his office. Behind her, her stained glass namesake continued her silent watch. "He was kind and brave. He did not run away from trials, but gave of himself generously until the end." He was a saint of the Lord, she thought to herself. Steadfast until the end, like Catherine, and like so many other saints who would never have windows and memorials of their own. Aloud, she said, "His faithfulness deserves to be remembered. And since there was no one there to remember in the end except for me, then I must make sure he's remembered."

"Even if you hadn't been there, God would remember him," Father O'Connor said. He picked up a pen and wrote Roche's name on the Sunday after next, his handwriting quick and confident. "Actions such as his are a sweet sacrifice in God's eyes."

He spoke almost as he would have if he'd known Father Roche himself. And before him in the book of intentions, Roche's name stood vivid and unerasable. Perhaps the burden of remembrance need not always fall on Kivrin alone.


End file.
